Wayne Deehring is the co-founder of USP Fulfillment, a company that has provided full-service print production fulfillment for over 30 years. They create and ship everything from books and promotional items, as well as products for infomercial speakers, events, and subscription fulfillment. USP Fulfillment has worked with companies like Costco, Sony, Coca Cola, Disney, Walmart, and have even created items for the Grammys and the Emmy Awards.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How Wayne Deehring got started in the print production business

How USP Fulfillment use case works and why he decided to venture into the fulfillment business

In this episode…

Do you have what it takes to expand the scope of your business to address customer demands? Have you ever been in that crossroads where your client is really valuable that you’ve had to decide whether to turn them down or to venture into the unknown just to fulfill their requests? Wayne Deehring of USP Fulfillment has been growing his business for over 30 years and he says, the only way to deal with customer demand is to see just how much further you can push the envelope.

Join Dr. Jeremy Weisz in this episode of Inspired Insider where he talks to Wayne about how he went from a printing business to being a frontrunner in the fulfillment industry. Tune in as they discuss how Wayne was able to bootstrap and expand his services to cater to growing customer demands, the challenges he faced in the process, the amazing work he has done with notable companies, and how he used both his business and his family as an inspiration to be better at everything he does

We distribute your show across more than 11 different channels (spotify, google play, itunes, and many more) including a dedicated blog post and social media. You simply show up and talk and we do everything else. Our team has been working with podcasters since 2009. I personally credit podcasting as the single best thing I have done for my business and my life. It has allowed me to connect with the founders/ceo’s ofP90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, and many more. Besides making best friends and finding my business partner, podcasting has led to relationships with countless customers and referral partners.

The most important piece that most are missing is the right strategy and we make sure our clients get ROI so it becomes one of the most valuable parts of your strategic partnerships.

Since this requires a lot of humans (we have operations, developers, writers, audio editors, video editors) to do the work we have limited bandwidth and only want to work with the right company. If using a podcast for strategic partnerships, content marketing, and increasing clients and referrals sounds interesting to you go to www.Rise25.com and contact us or email support (at) rise25media.com.

If your company wants to attract and connect with your highest level customers and referral partners then you can learn more and contact us to find out if your company qualifies atRise25.com.

Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…

Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz 0:22
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders like the founders you’ve heard of some you’ve never heard of like p90x founder Tony Horton you may have heard of, but what you may not know is, you know when he made money as a street mine before he sold hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s how he made money. He put a hat on the street of the street miming and that’s how he made his food and rent money. Baby Einstein founder to Clark talks about growing our company to $20 million with five employees and selling to Disney but she also talks about beating cancer twice and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell talked about how when he was Steve Jobs, as many Or Steve offered him 33% of Apple for $50,000. And why he said no. So check out many more episodes on inspiredinsider.com and this episode is brought to you by Rise25, which I co-founded with my business partner, John Corcoran. And what we do is we help b2b businesses connect to their dream 100 clients and referral partners by helping them run and launch their podcasts that generates ROI. And for me, you know, podcasting is a lot more personal. It’s not just business because my grandfather who was a Holocaust survivor, he and his brother were in concentration camps in Nazi Germany. And they were the only members of their family to survive but his words and legacy live on because of an interview because the Holocaust foundation did an interview with him. And I put it on my about page and I watch it multiple times a year. Just for inspiration and appreciation, gratitude. So yes, podcasting will help your business but it helps you and your guests leave a legacy of knowledge and me personally To credit podcasting to one of the best things I’ve done for my business in my life, besides meeting my wife because of the amazing relationships, so we worked with Berkshire Hathaway companies, agencies, SAS companies, any b2b businesses. If you have questions, you can email support at Rise25media.com or go to rise25.com. Wayne. I’m excited to introduce today’s guests. We have Wayne Deering, he’s co-founder of USP fulfillment. And for 30 years they’ve done full-service print production fulfillment in our direct mail house and they create and ship everything from books, promotional items. They serve up products for infomercial speakers, events and subscription fulfillment. And you’ve probably heard some of the companies they’ve done work for. They work with companies like Costco, Sony, Coca Cola, Disney Walmart, and they’ve even created and set items for the Grammys, and the Emmy award shows Wayne, thank you for joining me

Wayne Deehring 3:00
Thanks for having me. Um,

Jeremy Weisz 3:03
You know, I want to start off in how did you get in this business?

Wayne Deehring 3:09
You know, it’s an interesting story. years ago, good 30 years ago, I was designing just kind of goofing around on a computer had didn’t really have any background in design, didn’t have any formal training and started designing on a logo. It was a logo I was designing for somebody that had asked me and they actually paid me for it. I’d never been paid to do any design. I thought it was sort of interesting. started to go ahead and kind of market myself a little bit back then and started making art for people. One thing led into another from doing the design that the natural progression from that was people I was doing designed for needed print. And I started actually by just going to wholesale print vendors and buying the printing and being the guy in the middle and then reselling it to them. And then it was just a natural progression into the printing business. And from there that led into the fulfillment side and it just it’s kind of run its course from there. What were they asking you to print? In the beginning, yeah, in the beginning, it was just real basic stuff, flyers, postcards, nightclub flyers of all things. I probably designed 10 or 12,000, nightclub fliers over the years, so and was just doing that for quite some time. You know, it was a good way an easy way to sit at home and make money.

Jeremy Weisz 4:50
So you started doing design and then they would request you to do printing. What was the progression? It seems like Maybe, you know, like flyers, what else were did? Did you start getting into over the years? I know you do. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, I know you do a lot of things. So I just if you could talk about some of the progression and some of the things you actually do, probably because people requested you to do it,

Jeremy Weisz 5:19
I imagine.

Wayne Deehring 5:21
Yeah, that’s really what it came down to is I even today in this company, we have a kind of a mantra we don’t say no to anything. If somebody needs it done we will get it done one way or another, even if we’ve never done it before, which at this point, we probably just about done at all, but what it was, you know, it’s from the natural progression in terms of, of the print it started with, like I said, the flyers decided to get into other stuff, more customized pieces, booklets after that, and it just really got into really anything they were asking Fourth, it was a custom folded, custom finishes all this sort of stuff and you know, that just kept on going. And as we did more, as I got more under my belt, more people were requesting, you know, stuff through the years you just sort of hook up with different people when you design and I started doing a lot of Halloween stuff I started illustrating items that were going to be made for Halloween props, so we draw them and then I would take them out to Hollywood and the different special effects houses, then did getting Lord of the Rings Hellboy those special effects houses would actually make the artists masters and then we send them out to China and Sri Lanka and different places to have them made into production pieces are so following. So what

Jeremy Weisz 6:57
They were actually like masks in action. All products that people would wear

Wayne Deehring 7:04
Are full props, not not the products they wear. Imagine like a Halloween thing with a guy with brains coming out of his head or something. I’d illustrate that and then take it out and the artists at these particular places would make it it was a fun time. Halloween stuff is always, you know, it’s fun.

Jeremy Weisz 7:25
I think it’d be interesting to hear about the evolution of the offices you had. Because I’m curious about a turning point because it seems like there’s some kind of turning point where you are using other facilities and then you have to make a real decision to invest in equipment and space and staff and everything, which I imagine is a big decision.

Wayne Deehring 7:48
Yeah, it is, you know, it just gets to a point where printing becomes very competitive because it’s highly commoditized. So it got to point where being the middleman and printing wasn’t working. And that sort of coincided with the internet becoming more ubiquitous and people using it, so the commoditization of printing and that made it where in order to still make money in printing, we got into the printing business. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 8:23
With that body of machines,

Jeremy Weisz 8:24
yeah, what point okay, you start off in whatever your bedroom and then what, what were the offices, the evolution of the offices after that

Wayne Deehring 8:36
started off yet at a home office. And then from there, it went to a more like an executive office just so I could get out of the house from there. Then we started investing in different equipment. We actually got a retail location and the retail location was more of a product that that front end retailer location. Yeah, Yo, I was I was actually like a retail print shop. Okay. And, you know, started buying the equipment we needed and investing in different things in order to be able to serve the people that were coming to us.

Jeremy Weisz 9:18
And then was, is that what you saw today or have you?

Wayne Deehring 9:24
Well, we continue to grow. So, yeah, yeah, we continue to grow. We have several locations, several businesses that we own that are all part of USP offices in Newport Beach here, another office in Santa Ana, that where we make custom boxes, custom binders. We had to move out of the retail friend space, we moved into a warehouse because at a point during the print people started asking us to fulfill what we weren’t printing, right. And it really started more With the info guys, so we were making 10s of thousands of courses for these guys. And then we were shipping them to their fulfillment company. And they asked us to start doing that’s about 15 years ago. And so we got into a warehouse, move the whole operation. And now we not only make the cut, you know, the regular printing the course just for everybody, thanks for that, you know, all the different companies that you mentioned, but in most cases, we fulfill that stuff as well. Hmm.

Jeremy Weisz 10:28
Yeah, walk me through a use case. So let’s say whatever back in the day Ziggs delivers on stage, he sells a million, you know, of his courses. And then they will, let’s say you’re producing those particular courses for that speaker or author, whoever. And then you will actually send that out on their behalf.

Wayne Deehring 10:53
Yeah, so what happens is we make them we warehouse them, they sit here, they’re made and completely assembled put into boxes. The orders come into our system from their CRM from their shopping cart or whatever or in the case of, say an event where he’s on stage, they send us a spreadsheet goes into our system. The orders are processed, labels are made, boxes are closed up, label goes on it goes out we handle all the returns to we check the returns for resale ability. And that goes after resellable perfect condition never used they go back on the shelf, go back into stock, otherwise, they’re processed or giving back to our client.

Jeremy Weisz 11:38
What tells me about the decision to do that because I could see someone coming in and go Hey, I’ve been saying the fulfillment house but I just want to use you and I could see you just as easily be like well, no, this is our partner facility fulfillment. We just want to focus on the printing. What made you decide to because it seems like a lot of moving parts with the fulfillment side.

Wayne Deehring 12:03
It is my partner Reza and I, you know, we really call ourselves if you can imagine back in the days of when circuses were real popular and you have the guy there with all the sticks. Yes. With the plates on top and he’s spinning the plate. Yes. We feel like we’re that guy. We have a lot of plates up there. And we constantly keep him moving. So to answer your question, yeah, it’s part of that, that we don’t say no to our clients sort of mantra. They asked us to do it, we figured it out. And we just moved into it. It is a lot of moving parts. It is a lot of responsibility. Time to market is paramount right in if somebody buys something, especially in today’s day and age, with the likes of Amazon and some of these companies where you order something right now at 1030 in the morning, and you get it at three o’clock in the afternoon. Right. All right. So it’s that simple. Sort of change in the landscape that, you know, prompted us to really get good at the fulfillment side of it quickly process and get stuff out because it’s important to the customers. And it’s in and the people expected now it’s no longer this something where it was a novelty getting something very quickly, you know, and it was nice now it’s just an expectation. Mm hmm. What’s the biggest in most cases, orders go out the same? Or go ahead. I’m sorry. No, go ahead. I say most in most cases that the orders come in and go out the same day.

Jeremy Weisz 13:38
I was saying what’s the biggest challenges around the fulfillment side?

Wayne Deehring 13:45
You know, it just it’s very labor. So it’s not an easy process. It may look easy. Yeah, we’re kind of like ducks on a lake. You know, and we make it look simple. But in order to make it all work and to flow, it’s it is a lot of work. Work, there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s not as easy as doing straight fulfillment at the print fulfillment is not as easy as doing regular pick pack fulfillment when I say straight fulfillment, which we do as well, so we do econ fulfillment for a number of companies out there. And that’s real simple. You take a product that’s already done, you know, it’s a single skill goes into a box or a bubble mailer, or a poly mailer, and then it goes out to print fulfillment, it is a lot more complicated because one course may have 110 different skews in it. So, you know, coordinating the whole part between all the print production and in assembly and getting it out the door and making sure that the QC on it is 100% that’s nothing’s missed, you know that that’s it is an interesting sort of

Unknown Speaker 14:53
process the whole way through.

Jeremy Weisz 14:55
So what are some examples of E comm products that you fulfill?

Wayne Deehring 15:01
So we do, there’s a product out there. It’s very popular right now, one of our clients boom, boom, it is an essential oil inhaler, nasal inhaler and it’s not one and they have a CBD line too but they’ve done really well they were on Shark Tank. They have the number of their videos that have gone viral so they push a lot of business for us. We do masks, scuba masks. With just a number of products, yarn of all things have you can go down the line is just stuff that sold on Amazon. So we do individual pick back and we also fulfill it into Amazon as well. Hmm. Oh, nice.